me. Her parents were born in Puerto
Rico. 'We believed, 'You light the can-
dle, and you pray.'" A report published
in 1965, when Santiago-Rivera was a
girl, found that ninety-four per cent of
women who died in New York City
from illegal abortions were either black
or Puerto Rican.
The Brooklyn health center is one of
four clinics run by Planned Parenthood
of New York City, an affiliate of the na-
tional organization. There's one in
Manhattan, one in the Bronx, and one
in Staten Island. There are eighty-two
Planned Parenthood affiliates nation-
wide, operating nearly eight hundred
clinics. Planned Parenthood says that
one in five women in the United States
has been treated at a Planned Parent-
hood clinic. Critics of Planned Parent-
hood, who are engaged in a sustained
attack on the organization, say that
most of those women are going to those
clinics to have abortions, paid for, in vi-
01ation of the Hyde Amendment, with
taxpayer money.
"This started the day after the mid-
terms," Cecile Richards said when we
met in July. Richards, the daughter of
the former Texas governor Ann Rich-
ards, has been the president of Planned
Parenthood since 2006. She's long-
boned and fair-haired and glamorous,
and she is in the eye of a perfect polit-
ical storm. "What happened at the
elections had nothing to do with abor-
tion or birth control or Planned Par-
enthood," she said. "It had to do with
the economy." But the election re-
shaped both Congress and
state legislatures, and her
theory is that "when those
guys can't figure out what
to do about jobs, and they
can't, their first target is
"
women.
The campaign against
Planned Parenthood has
been unrelenting. Michele
Bachmann, in one speech, accused the
organization of "committing crimes
and enabling young minor girls and
covering up issues I don't even want to
talk about it because it's so disgusting"
and, in another, described clinics in
swank suburban malls where wealthy
women who are "picking up Starbucks"
can be found "stopping off for an abor-
tion." Was it shabby and underhanded
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46 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 14,2011
or upmarket and unabashed? "We
would wake up and, every day, it would
be about something else," Richards
said. "Some days it was about abortion.
Some days it was about race. Some days
it was about me. Some days it was about
kids."
The fury over Planned Parenthood is
two political passions-opposition to
abortion and opposition to government
programs for the poor-acting as one.
So far, it has nearly led to the shutdown
of the federal government, required Re-
publican Presidential nominees to swear
their fealty to the pro-life lobby, tied up
legislatures and courts in more than half
a dozen states, launched a congressional
investigation, and helped cripple the
Democratic Party. What's next?
P lanned Parenthood's latest round of
difficulties dates back about a year.
Just as the new Republican-majority
House was being seated, a group called
Live Action, whose mission is "to ex-
pose abuses in the abortion industry and
advocate for human rights for the pre-
born," sent a man posing as a pimp and
a woman posing as a prostitute to
Planned Parenthood clinics across the
country, equipped with a hidden cam-
era. Live Action was started in 2003 by
a home schooled fifteen-year-old Cali-
fornia girl named Lila Rose; she has
worked with James O'Keefe, who has
engineered stings on ACORN and NPR.
Charmaine Y oest, who heads Ameri-
cans United for Life, has called Rose
"the Upton Sinclair of this generation."
Santiago-Rivera be-
lieves that the pimp and
the prostitute came to her
clinic and left, frustrated by
_ "' the questions they faced
at the registration desk.
Planned Parenthood re-
ported the man to the
F.B.I. At the beginning of
February, Live Action
posted on the Internet very troubling
videos taken at seven clinics, including
one in New Jersey, where a clinic man-
ager suggests lying to avoid detection.
(The manager was subsequently fired.)
In footage shot at the clinic in the
Bronx, where Santiago-Rivera went to
get birth control when she was a teen-
ager, the couple asks about making ap-
pointments for girls who don't speak
" '
\
English and who might need abortions.
Live Action's transcript reads like this:
PP: We see people as young as 13 years
old.
Prostitute: How old?
PP: We see people as young as 13 and-
Pimp: As young as 13.
PP: Everything is totally confidential.
Days later, Mike Pence, a Republi-
can representative from Indiana, intro-
duced to Congress a measure to elimi-
nate all federal funding for Planned
Parenthood. "I thought that was an
P , " R . h d " I
error on ence s part, IC ar s says.
thought theyd go for abortion restric-
tions, one by one, bit by bit. To have
gone foursquare against Planned Par-
enthood-well, to do that is to go after
health care for women."
Calling the Pence Amendment an
attack on women's health was, in any
case, the countermove. Planned Parent-
hood animated much of the budget de-
bate on the House floor. "These pro-
posed cuts to family planning represent
the opening salvo in an all-out war on
women's health," said Louise Slaughter,
a Democrat from New York's Twenty-
eighth District, after Pence introduced
his amendment. Todd Rokita, a Re-
publican from Indiana, called Slaugh-
ter's comments laughable demagoguery.
Paul Broun of Georgia, a doctor, a
member of the Tea Party Caucus, and a
sponsor of the Sanctity of Human Life
Act, said, "This is about abortion":
"Those babies deserve the right of per-
sonhood." Chris Smith, a Republican
from New Jersey, labelled Planned Par-
enthood "Child Abuse, Incorporated."
This led Jackie Speier, a Democrat from
California, to remark that the speech
made by the congressman from New
Jersey left her reeling. Then she told the
story of her own abortion, owing to
medical complications in the seven-
teenth week of a planned pregnancy,
and added, turning to Smith:
For you to stand on this floor and to sug-
gest, as you have, that somehow this is a
procedure that is either welcomed, or done
cavalierly, or done without any thought, is
preposterous. To think that we are here to-
night debating this issue, when the American
people, if they are listening, are scratching
their heads and wondering: What does this
have to do with me getting a job?
The Pence Amendment passed, 240
to 185. The Senate voted down the
House budget, 56 to 44. Forty-one sen-